Can someone explain the medicare bill to me. Democrats are voting to give doctors more tax dollars

[RB TexLa]

and Bush is going to veto giving more money to doctors?

Isn't this a little backwards?

[msongs]

1. seems to me the bill stops a CUT in money for doctors, does not GIVE them more than ever nt

[Connie_Corleone]

2. You're correct.

[RoyGBiv]

3. Explanation ...

The Medicare Bill prevents an automatic cut in payments that would have resulted in doctors refusing to treat patients who have no other way of paying them.

</explanation>

[bluerum]

4. No. Keeping them from cutting medicare payments to doctors by 10%.

Not a raise by any stretch.

Of course, because funding to medicare is being cut overall, they have to reduce payments to someone else.

Medicare is health insurance. It helps millions of people every year.

I would much rather pay taxes for medicare than Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and a laundry list of government spending programs.

[John Q. Citizen]

5. I would gladly have Medicare for all. Pay for it with taxes. Everyone with income pays in

every one is covered. Medical, dental, eye, preventative, mental health.

Global budgeting, negotiated fee schedules, negotiated prescription drugs.

[Hidden Stillness]

6. Good Answers to This Question

The answers to this OP are very good, and explain the situation. The important points are that 1) the payments to general practitioners/family doctors have not kept up with costs and inflation for many years, and this just puts it roughly where it should have been by this time, and gets rid of the latest Republican attempt to kill Medicare by defunding it one way or another, and, 2) the point is that this helps older people, the disabled, and others on Medicare who would have had to pay for these doctor visits themselves, and never could have. This enables them to keep going to the doctor, especially for conditions that need to be monitored, and stops doctors from dropping Medicare patients because they lose money by having them, rather than other patients with better reimbursement from insurance. The Medicare payments to doctors are one of the bedrock foundations of universal health care, and it was significant and wonderful--yet expected--that this was the vote that Ted Kennedy managed to make it back to the Senate for.

[spindrifter]

7. I am happy to have tax dollars (mine) help pay

the health costs of people who can't afford health care.

How about this anecdote. Friend needs a procedure to prevent incontinence. Procedures that need to be done before the surgery cost $45,000. Her insurance won't tell her whether they will cover it until after the procedures are done and the billing is sent in. So she has to pay either her 10% or the entire $45K.

That is totally wrong!!

[Xithras]

8. Bush wants to break Medicare.

Doctors are under no obligation to take Medicare, and in cutting payouts by 10% the Republicans virtually guarantee that thousands of doctors across the country will stop accepting it. When Medicare patients can no longer find doctors, the system will be declared a "failure" and scrapped.

That's their gameplan.

[RB TexLa]

9. Thanks